Wildlife

"Bald eagles continue to expand in Kentucky, extending a steady increase in breeding pairs especially during the last decade."

"The controversial six-month dolphin hunting season began on Monday in the infamous town of Taiji, but bad weather would delay any killing, a local official told AFP."

"JACKSON, Wyo. – Meghan Warren grabbed the bald eagle’s legs with thick leather gloves to secure its powerful talons. With her other hand, she pinned the bird’s wings before they could unfold to a six-foot span."

"In a sharp rebuke of state plans for a massive water tunnel system in Northern California, federal environmental officials say that the project would violate pollution standards and could worsen conditions for imperiled fish species."

"FLATEY ISLAND, Iceland – When the days grew long, seabirds flocked to this hamlet on the edge of the Arctic to rear their chicks under the midnight sun. “Kria,” shrieked the terns, calling summer up from the slumbering ground. Black cliffs were transformed into snowbanks of white kittiwakes. Puffins whirred between land and sea. Murres plied the shoreline, fulmars patrolled the skies. Everywhere sounded their vibrant chorus."

The wolf known as OR7 prompted some reflective writing -- and a flood of reader response -- in the Pacific states. The coverage reminds us that there is room for the personal and evocative as well as the objective and informative in environmental journalism. And it restored Sacramento Bee writer Matt Weiser's faith in the newspaper.

"PITT MEADOWS, British Columbia – On an early spring morning the Pitt River flows so calmly that the peaks of the Coast Range seem to pause to admire themselves in its glassy waters. A motorboat lifts a wake, and the docks of the marina moan. Still tucked in for the winter, the pleasure boats stir then rock themselves back to sleep."

"Environmentalists and a South Florida community want to limit aerial spraying for mosquitoes — saying it's ineffective and harmful to wildlife. Two butterfly species were added to the endangered list."

"The ice of Antarctica doesn’t faze birds. Nor does the heat of the tropics. They thrive in the desert, in swamps, on the open ocean, on sheer rock faces, on treeless tundra, atop airless mountaintops and burrowed into barren soil."

"Nearly four decades after grizzly bears were declared threatened in the Lower 48 states, long-stalled efforts to bring the species back to Washington's North Cascades are rolling again."